


the only way

by redreys



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: + wild use of poetry, M/M, and that matters!!!! even as the world ends, anyway they ruined my life, because you can't give me a character that is canonically into it and expect me not to bring it up, but it's like. they are so in love, cuddling and talking about dates they'll never go to, disgusting amounts of tenderness, hand holding i think, im not gonna lie there's a lot of melancholy, post MAG 160
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21638188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redreys/pseuds/redreys
Summary: whatever happens when you are equally sure that yes, the world will end, but no, you can't stop loving the man you love, and no, you don't even want to try.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 13
Kudos: 109





	the only way

**Author's Note:**

> I finished tma yesterday and started it two weeks ago. my life is ruined.  
> enjoy the fic

It’s not easy to believe in it.

Martin knows this. The world is crumbling around them, bit by bit.

Even if they managed to save what’s left of it, he has no illusion of making it out alive. And even if they did— even then, Martin has trouble imagining a version of reality where either of them is not too broken to pursue happiness.

So, yeah: sometimes, believing it’s excruciating. There will be these small moments of stillness, these breaths in between that Martin feels compelled to catch, turn into dreams, oases of calm, illusions of forever, and when the time comes to let them go, for a second he will think it all too painful to execute. And loneliness, then, it’s all he wants. Nothing to lose, just memories to play over and over, each time more dimly, until they too disappear.

He still believes, though. Of course he still believes. Surely there is no point in the madness of living, but if he had to choose one, this would be it. Even for them. Even still.

Jon is sitting on the couch. Arms propped up on his knees, he stares at the wall in front of him.

Outside, the storm persists, but it’s less violent than it has been in the past few days.

There’s a complicated, dangerous plan all set for tomorrow that Martin doesn’t even want to think about. Aside from the end of the world as we know it, there’s not much else to report.

So, Martin is looking at him.

The bent shape of his nose, the expression he makes when he is perplexed. His skin, damaged and incredibly resistant. His hands, still and unnerved all at once.

He remembers the first time he caught himself staring at him. When all was so, so much simpler.

_God_ , it was infuriating.

Despite what everyone seemed to think, he had indeed long ago realised that falling in love with Jonathan Sims was likely not going to be his best bet. So, he tried to resist it at first. Write it off as gratitude, or admiration, or “intellectual interest”. Even concern, if push came to shove.

And for a while, he succeeded.

But he never could, for the life of him, rationalise any of the staring.

Whenever he could look at Jon, he would want to see him, too. He would follow his every movement with an attentiveness that frankly scared him. And he _clearly_ had no ulterior motives.  
He even tried to fabricate them at times, but to no result. He couldn’t make up a reason for the sudden warmth he felt when Jon would hold up a pen just so, move his head to the side, and nod, having found the answer he was looking for.

Martin just longed for him. Wanted him there.

When that woman came in to… complain, about what Jon had done to her, when he told him about her nightmares, no small part of him found the idea of Jon’s face populating anyone’s nightmares unthinkable. It’s not that he didn’t understand what was happening— he did. It was just too hard of a reach. Jon’s eyes were in his best dreams. They meant: _safe_. They meant _love_.

He was aware that they didn’t always mean love, and rarely they ever actually meant safe.

And he knew that a lot of things could have been done to avoid the end. Many different choices could have been taken. But Martin looks at Jon now, and he knows he would have fallen in love anyway.

No matter how many times he would have to see him for the first time and think _who’s that guy, he looks weird_. No matter how many trials and errors— if it had to be him, Martin would have had to be there.

Which isn’t fair, perhaps not even worth it, but it’s the point anyway.

And Martin believes in it.

After all, does it even make sense to try and take the blame? The more Martin thinks about it, the more absurd it seems.

 _Everything I have ever done has led to this_. Perhaps, yeah.

But what else was there to do? Can you actually blame the butterfly for the hurricane? Even when all the butterfly was trying to do was survive?

Jon was marked out of love. His own suffering, his own scars— most of those he got because he wanted to help someone else. Martin refuses to blame him for the fall of a world he was, and still _is_ , trying so hard to protect.

Slowly, he steps up from the door frame, and sits beside him on the couch.

Jon doesn’t say anything, but he sighs and his whole body loosens. He takes his head in his hands and closes his eyes.

Despite everything that has happened, Martin is still hesitant to touch him. He has to remind himself that he can, that it’s okay, that it’s welcomed.

Tentatively, he puts his arm around Jon’s back.

Jon flinches, ever so slightly, somehow taken aback, and, for a moment, Martin is afraid that actually it isn’t welcomed, and he isn’t always allowed.

But then, almost instantly, Jon pushes back into the touch, slowly as if he didn’t quite know how.

Without moving his head or his arms, he shifts his position until he is sitting much closer to Martin. It’s awkward and clumsy, and Martin smiles so wide he imagines he must look ridiculous.

He can’t help himself, then: his arm falls from Jon’s back and lowers down to his waist. He tucks his head in the crook of Jon’s neck, and breathes him in.

Jon makes a low _mmm_ noise, gentle and content.

“You really are like a cat sometimes,” Martin says, quietly.

“I’m sorry?”

Jon’s voice is tired, but Martin can still hear the life in it. He tries to feel it, then, _truly_ feel it, until the solidity of it becomes real enough for him to stop worrying about it.

“You flinch away, like you aren’t really made to be found, and then you come looking. You purr like one, too.”

Jon smiles. “Oh, he is a poet.”

Martin raises his head, rests his chin on Jon’s shoulder. “I am, actually.”

Jon turns to look at him, and here it is, in his eyes: _safe_. Love.

“And by the way, I don’t _purr_.”

Martin raises his eyebrows. _Is that a challenge?_

He smiles wider, and kisses the spot under Jon’s ear.

Jon bites his lips like he is trying really hard not to make any sound whatsoever, but he does sigh in relief, and so Martin keeps going, wrap himself tighter around him, nudges him with his nose, kisses his cheek until Jon forgets his claims and hums, deep and alive.

He frees one of his arms to take Martin’s hand into his. Brings it to his lips and just rests it there. Reverently. Lovingly.

“You know, if the world wasn’t ending,” Jon says, playfully though he means it, “I think I would have asked you out.”

Martin chuckles. “Really? You take me by surprise.”

“Would you say yes?”

“Not sure. I would have to think about it.”

  
Jon turns slightly until their foreheads touch.

 _Jesus_ , they are like teenagers.

“Where would you want to go?”

Martin shrugs. “Wherever you like.”

“Dinner out, maybe?”

He shakes his head. “Too fancy. I imagine we would get stuck on an elevator on the way or something.”

“What kind of London restaurant has an elevator in the way of it?”

Martin frowns, as though Jon just asked a really stupid question. “The fancy one you would choose in a panic the day before.”

Jon's cheek are suddenly very, very warm. “Fuck off.”

“I mean, am I wrong?”

Jon hesitates for a moment, and then, gently, he untangles himself from him and gets up from the couch. Martin immediately feels the loss of him. It’s almost painful. It feels absurd.

“C’mon, I’ll make you dinner,” Jon says, hand extended in the space between them.

“You remember that we have very limited meal options, right?”

Jon sighs. “I will be the one to put the food in the plates. I think it counts as making you dinner.”

Martin laughs. “Fine,” he says, and takes the hand.

* * *

When they finish eating, the storm is still raging, and they are still pretending not to hear it.

They are in bed, now. And though they are exhausted, Martin knows that they are both trying very hard not to sleep. Every moment is important. Every moment together is, well— the point.

Through the dim lights of the room, Martin, lying on his back, turns his head to look at Jon. They aren’t really touching, but they are close.

Jon is looking at him, too. 

“Tell me a poem,” he says, suddenly, breaking the silence.

Martin must look confused, because Jon smiles and adds: “Just- just one you like. If any come to mind.”

He thinks about it. Tries to choose one that fits.

It’s perhaps too complex of a goal. Choosing a fitting poem for the end of the world, and for the man that caused it, more or less indirectly. Maybe if that same man wasn’t the person he loved it would have been easier. But, like most things, it isn’t.

So Martin thinks a little harder, and, eventually, he finds something.

“I, mh- okay. Okay I thought of one. It’s not mine. A Polish poet wrote it. Szymborska, I think it was? I am not sure I’m pronouncing the name correctly. Anyway, she is a contemporary poet. I think she might be still alive-”

“She died in 2012.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Sorry. Habit.”

Martin tries to compose himself, tell it like he means it, but it’s not as easy as he expected. It’s not even sure he remembers it by heart.

He wants to— he wants to make a good impression. Which is absurd, considering the circumstances.

Since he can’t really help it, however, he leans into it. Unbidden, he lets his mind make up a picture he will never be a part of: two men, both alive, are lying together on their bed. They live trivial, uninteresting lives, but they might just be in love. They haven’t been a couple for long, but it has been nice. More than nice, actually.

On of them asks the other to recite a poem, because he is disgustingly romantic like that, and the other concedes. It’s important that he tells it well. They have a whole life ahead of them, surely, but it still is important. He wants to make a good impression, is all.

Martin, this ordinary, oblivious man, gets up.

He looks for his bag— no, _a_ bag, one of the many, not the single one he brings wherever he goes, all his possession enclosed in it, ready to be carried away from house to house, until there will be no longer anyone to claim it— and takes a notebook out of it.

He comes back to the bed, next to the man he has fallen in love with, and he sits, crossed-leg, by his side. He turns the worn-out pages of his notebook until he finds what he is looking for.  
Martin reads the poem in silence, just once, and here it is again, immaculate in his memory.

It almost feels like the good version of reading a statement. If the universe was fair, something close to a tape-recorder, only the opposite of it, would know to record this moment.

If any good force existed, it would understand that it is here— that here is what’s worth looking for, looking after.

Eyes locked into Jon’s, Martin starts talking.

“ _Life — is the only way to get covered in leaves,_ ” (and he thinks, as he talks, of that time in the middle of October, when outside of the institute he had found Jon walking in a small circle, seemingly for no reason except hearing the pleasant noise leaves made when being stepped on: he had asked, of course he had asked, and Jon had gotten embarssed, defensive, powerless in the face of Martin’s chuckle) _“catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings,_ ” (and he thinks, as he talks, of Jon’s hand clutching at his neck, in a lonely, lonely place— he thinks of the breath he let out, of the freedom of escape) “ _to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur,_ ” (he always liked dogs: they should get one before the world ends), “ _to tell pain from everything it's not._ ” (he doesn’t think, at that: he just looks at the inexistent space between his body and Jon’s, and calls it what it is)   
“ _To squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes,”_ (and suddenly, entities and fear and rituals do not matter: what does is only that time he mistook what Jon said for a joke, and answered with one of his own, causing both of them to stumble, misstep, get flustered over nothing, wonder, each in private —and that, that was maybe the biggest mistake—, whether one could call it flirting) “a _n extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off,_ ” (he thinks, as he talks, of the secrets Jon left on his back, the touches he put deep into his heart, like whispers, life gifts) “ _and if only once to stumble upon a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another, mislay your keys in the grass,”_ (he had spent hours looking for his key to the institute, once, only for Jon to declare that Martin had left it on his desk a few nights before, and he had put it somewhere safe, so that it couldn’t get any more lost) “a _nd to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes,”_ (they had never been on a real vacation, they had never seen the sun rise, not together, not intently) “ _and to keep on not knowing,_ ” (all seeing eye, ceaseless watcher, so ignorant and so human) “ _something important.”_

Jon opens his mouth as if to talk, but nothing comes out.

He just— he just keeps _staring_ , and Martin doesn’t hold anything back. He lets it happen.

“Read me another,” Jon whispers, eventually, and Martin does.

Jon flicks through his notebook, and points at the ones he knows, has heard of, likes. Martin reads some of his own poems, too. Even those that are so sad and catastrophic Martin fears they might feel a bit too theatrical— and he reads, out loud, even the ones that are about Jon.

He makes him smile, and his eyes widen, and he looks so embarrassed he might need to leave the room, and Martin just keeps reading, just keeps giving and giving it all out, until the night is utterly dark, and one of them turns off the lights.

For a moment, their bodies don’t touch. It feels important, somehow, to fill that space.

To have it there, always, to say each time: I _choose_ to cross it. I _want_ to do it.

Tonight, it’s Jon’s turn.  
He turns towards Martin and he practically wraps himself around him, their legs tangled together, their hands reaching gently everywhere they can.

“Martin, I—“ Jon starts, and it’s like he can’t say it, like he wants to keep it a secret between them, and not even the air they breathe has the right to know it, not even the words themselves are enough to contain it.

“I know,” Martin says, sleepily. “Me too.”

And maybe it’s not enough. Maybe it’s not worth it all, maybe neither of them deserves it, maybe they are the only ones that do— but, regardless, it might just be the point.

And Martin believes it.

“Thank you,” he whispers, and kisses the top of Jon’s head.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem Martin reads is called "A note", by Wisława Szymborska (my favorite poet and, spiritually, my wife) + i am [mxrspider](https://mxrspider.tumblr.com/) on tumblr and thanks for reading!


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